Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Elk Hunting 308 win with 165 sst suitable for elk?

Bought some 165g SST's yesterday. They will be used to work up practice loads for son-in-law's 30-06. If they work out I'll try to match the load using AccuBond or TTSX.

While I agree wholeheartedly with DonFischer that premiums are not needed in "most cases". It is the other cases I'm concerned about.

Not all "premium" bullets provide the consistent performance I want and the old Barnes X bullets were a prime example of same. Barnes TTSX have been uniformly excellent performers for my group, as have Nosler AccuBond and Partition, Speer Grand Slam and Swift A-Frame.

If using factory ammo I would try to find two loads that shoot about the same, as verified at the range, one a cheap practice load and one using a proven premium for the actual hunt. As a handloader, I find shooting premiums is no more expensive than standard factory ammo and often less. Shooting SST's and other cup-and-core bullets for practice further cuts the costs. Once a premium load is developed the incremental cost of using them on a hunt is vanishingly small when compared to the other costs of the hunt. I've found even development costs can be cut significantly by shooting a string of loads with .5g increments and finding 3-4 consecutive shots that group well. Pick a load in the middle of such a string and retest and quite often you are done. Shooting premiums doesn't have to empty your bank account.


"Plan for the worst and work for the best" is a motto that, if followed, will save you a lot of grief in all facets of your life.